668 ASILID^ 



brownish, long and narrowly oblong, empodium represented by an orange 

 bristle ; claws long and blackish, but brown about the base. 



Wings subhyaline with a yellowish tinge and with an obvious extensive 

 greyish gloom about the tip and hindmargin, and this gloominess has a fairly 

 distinct boundary as it occupies all the wing-tip back to the base of the 

 cubital fork and extends stripe-like much more towards the wing-base in the 

 submarginal and marginal cells, and while occupying most of the posterior 

 cells leaves the veinmargins of the second to fifth of those cells hyaline, 

 while the axillary cell is also considerably gloomed ; veins brown, but the 

 mediastinal and subcostal veins and the stem of the postical yellowish brown. 

 SquamiB (alar) pale yellow with an orange margin and with a rather long 

 whitish or pale yellow fringe on the lower margin. Halteres dull orange or 

 yellow. 



$ . Very much like the male except for the ovipositor. The pale hairs of the 

 face-beard yellow to reddish orange ; chin- and jowl-beards and the 

 pubescence extending up the back of the head yellow or orange ; top bristle 

 of the postocular festoon orange ; collar with more numerous but indistinct 

 orange bristles on its upper part. 



Thorax with the middle stripe narrowly reaching the hindmargin. 

 Bristles (except the postalar) sometimes all black. Scutellar bristles longer 

 and stronger and all black. 



Abdomen (when seen from above) yellowish grey, or (when seen from 

 behind) dull black with conspicuous well defined rather broad pale hind- 

 margins of segments and the sidemargins broadly of the same colour ; this 

 coloring is remarkably distinct, but the tint of the pale coloring may range 

 from pale yellowish to brownish yellow ; the short pale pubescence which 

 occurs all over the abdomen may also vary to a similar extent in colour, but 

 the hindmarginal bristles are more conspicuous than in the male ; eighth 

 abdominal segment merged into the ovipositor. Ovipositor (fig. 358) shining 

 black, remarkably deep, about as long as the two previous segments of the 

 abdomen together, straight along its vipper margin and slightly convex but 

 undulating beneath because there is a slight concave curve near the middle ; 

 when seen from above the basal part is moderately compressed, but more 

 than the end half is so much compressed as to appear linear ; the second 

 upper piece is unusually large, being distinctly more than half as long as the 

 first and bounded against that in an S-like line, coarsely rugose on the upper 

 apical third but finely rugose on the rest, sharply excised at the end so that 

 the end lamellae are wedged in between its upper and lower points ; end 

 lamella3 rather large, rhombic rather than ovate, sparsely but coarsely 

 punctate, pointed at the end, and bearing moderately long ciliation ; the 

 large under-piece extending quite to the base of the lamellae and deeply 

 wrinkled on the apical third ; pubescence of the ovipositor short and sparse, 

 but some rather long sparse pale yellowish or black hairs occur near the base 

 of the under-piece and on the upper sides of the second upper-piece. 



Legs with the bristles as in the male but in addition the middle femora 

 sometimes bear three anterior and two antero-ventral bristles ; middle tibice 

 sometimes with three anterior bristles after the middle ; hind femora with 

 rather more numerous subapical bristles ; hind tibiae with three antero-dorsal 

 bristles. 



Length about 15 mm. 



This species belongs to the group in which no bristles occur in either 

 sex on the underside of the front femora, and to that section of the group 

 in which the legs are entirely black ; it is the only one of the genus known 

 to occur in Britain and as the generic characters are rather indefinite it 

 may be confounded with Philonicus alhiceps and Machimus riisticus. From 

 F. alhiceps the male may be at once known by the prolongation of the 

 eighth ventral segment, and the female by the absence of any circlet of 

 spines at the end of the ovipositor ; P. alhiceps is also a much lighter grey 



